Denise Bishop-Earle: Community Leader, Education Activist, Artist, Historian, Healer

Denise Bishop-Earle: Community Leader, Education Activist, Artist, Historian, Healer

Denise Bishop-Earle *Photo by Tristen West

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I was born in Windsor, Ontario in Hotel Dieu Hospital. The interesting thing about where I was born was that before it became a hospital it was an orphanage for black children. My mom sent me an article about it last year. Most of the children were likely descendants of slaves and they became orphans for many different reasons. It seemed like the nuns who ran the orphanage at the time recognized that there were a lot of homeless black children and so decided to take care of them. The orphanage was open for about 4 or 5 years, and then it converted into a hospital. That would have been in the late 1800’s.

Can you tell me about your family?

My mother’s name is Elsie Lorraine Green-Bishop and my dad was Frederick Eugene Bishop. My mom was born in Owen Sound and my Dad was born in Windsor, his family lived on Tecumseh Road. I have 10 living siblings, and one deceased sibling. My parents Elsie and Frederick had 11 children together. Ross, was the oldest, followed by Harvey, Paul, then Dennis, then Nancy, Ricky was Frederick- named after my dad- then myself, then umm Billy was William- he was named after Billy Bishop the airplane pilot, then Carol, then Johnny, and then my baby sister Lesa with an e.

Growing up in a big family was great! In our family, the older kids took care of the younger kids. And they disciplined more severely than our parents- they were like sergeant majors! If we didn’t do what they told us, they would knock us up-side the head or lock us in their arms or pin us between their legs and make us say stupid stuff.

Of all my siblings, I was probably closest to my younger sister Carol, who I talk to almost every weekend.

When we were kids, at meal time we had to sit at the dinner table and we couldn’t leave the table until we ate everything. Living in the country we liked to eat fresh vegetables. I remember the first time my mother bought frozen vegetables in a plastic bag. We hated them, they tasted so horrible- so when my mom wasn’t looking, we threw them at each other. My Dad, who just came home from work, walked through the dining room as we were throwing them and got hit in the head with a pea. We got in some trouble that day.

We lived in the country- my parents had 10 acres in Sandwich South, on Howard Avenue. I recently learned that Howard Avenue is named after the son of an ex-slave who was a farmer, his name was Irwin Howard.

There’s a lot of history around Windsor around the Underground Railroad. We were very connected to people who were studying the Underground Railroad. My mother just retired as an executive member of the North American Black Historical Museum that’s in Amherstburg, Ontario. She was part of the Women’s Auxilliary, which was an advisory committee for the museum. My mother and father were part of the Crescendo Club- it was a black club that used to raise money for different causes in the community. There were people who participated in the club from Windsor, Amherstburg and in Michigan State.

My mother being originally from Owen Sound, it was natural for us to participate in the emancipation picnic founded by our ancestors. Since 1862, as a part of our heritage, every year during the first long weekend of August we would go to the Owen Sound Emancipation picnic/family reunion. Our family reunion has been taking place for longer than Canada has been Canada! Apparently this is where my parents met. During the Labor Day weekend all the Black churches from Windsor to Owen, participated in a large church picnic in North Buxton. They call it Homecoming, but we called it September Day. People from all the churches come together in Buxton to celebrate our African heritage. It was lots of fun.

What was it like growing up in Windsor?

It was pretty much farmland where we grew up. My father rented out some of his land to farmers. At the back of our land we used to have a small pond and some tree forts. At the back our neighbor kept his bulls. I remember slipping through the fences and teasing the bulls and then running and diving through the fences moments before the bulls could catch up with us. At that time our house was heating with oil. We used to use the empty barrels for barrel races, racing towards each other until we were close enough to jump on the others barrel. We were crazy kids- we had lots of fun. At night we would play Hide and Seek- you could hardly see anything because it was so dark in the country. That was a lot more fun than Hide and Seek in the day time.

My first school was Rural Route Number 4 School, then I went to Frith Public School. They closed Frith Public School in 1966 because of a terrible school bus accident. At the time it was one of the worst bus accidents in North America. It was the last day of school before the Christmas holidays. The accident happened on Walker Road and Highway # 3. Apparently the dump truck lost one of its wheels and collided with our bus. Most of the children who died were at the front of the bus. Every child on the bus was injured and eight of my classmates were killed. My brother Billy had a broken leg and my cousin Susie broke her arm. I had a brain injury, which affects me to this day. My head was smashed into a window. I don’t have any memory of it- but I do remember one thing- all my friends were sitting at the front of the bus and I wanted to sit at the back seat, because I liked the bounce when we went over the railway tracks. So I went to the back of the bus and that’s what saved me. I have two brothers and two cousins who were also on the bus- they remember what happened, but I have no memory of it. It did impact me though. From the age of eight I always had bad headaches and in my early 20’s they were so bad I had a hard time functioning. I didn’t learn until much later that I had been through some kind of trauma and depression. When I was 31, I went for a CT scan because my headaches were getting so bad. The doctor asked what happened to my brain because of the scar tissue he saw.

I graduated grade 8 from Prince Andrew Public School. I was an A student. In high school I was an honour student until my last year. I went to Amherst High School in Amherstburg for grade 9 and 10. In grade 11 I went to a new school called Sandwich Secondary. It looked like a prison. It has really tiny windows. It took me a while to get used to that school.

In 1978 I moved to Toronto to go to school at York University for Visual Arts. My first year I lived in Vanier College in residence and after that I moved to Wallace Ave near Lansdowne. I lived there with four other students.

Oh yes, I always was involved in the arts, and storytelling too. When I was younger we had an art teacher named Mr. Linnel. He travelled from school to school and he always taught us art and music. He was the one that inspired me. He used to have his own band. Later on, when I went to high school I took art lessons from him in drawing, painting and charcoal. He used to teach classes at a recreation centre in Malden. You had to travel quite a distance to go there. My Dad dropped me off and picked me up. I also took dance and ballet, although I don’t know why I took ballet, I sucked at it!! (laughs)

I grew up on the Motown sound, so I loved anything Motown!! Gladys Knight was one of my favourites, Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, George Benson. When I was a teenager I was part of a dance group called The Black Girls. We performed at different events. We were in parades, competitions and things like that, in both Canada and the United States. The group was later became the African Canadian Ensemble. We started doing more gymnastics and we also had boys in the group. We had a lot of fun.

It was my mom who really got us into understanding our Black History. She made sure we knew who we were and where we came from. Sometimes we went to the States to learn about our Black History. They really weren’t teaching it here in Canada at the time. But black churches in the states were teaching it. So about once a month, on Sunday after church, we’d all get into the car and we’d drive over to one of the baptist churches in the States and learn about our Black History.

My Dad worked at Chryslers in Detroit. My grandfather worked in the US as well. I can’t remember exactly what he did.

My mother instilled in us a sense of cultural pride, history and also activism. She was the activist in our family. My father was a mason, so he liked to build stone structures. He was hired by people to build stone monuments and things like that. There’s a Legion in Windsor that has a monument that he built.

Well, he is my ex-life partner!! (laughs) We have been separated for 10 years.

I met him downtown when I was in school at York. I was shopping with some friends and I met him at a store where he was the manager. He asked me out and I said yes. We were always extreme opposites.

We had 3 kids together. Jeromi, my step son, is the eldest, then Kisha, then Kori and Keianna, the youngest.

I came to live in Lawrence Heights in May 14, 1984 at 69 Flemington Rd. It was just before my twenty-seventh birthday. I’ve been living in the same house since then.

Denise at Lawrence Heights Memory Bank Event

There was Isadore - we used to call him Dore - and his wife Sally. They were the first seniors I met here. Dore used to love to garden and used to show everybody how to garden. He used to walk everywhere. There was also Salt and Pepper Sally, two seniors who used to run a consignment store in the basement of 3 Old Meadow Lane. They told me all about living in Lawrence Heights- they told me where to shop, they told me about the schools. They were part of the Feisty Seniors. Stella McCready was the one person who introduced me to the tenants association and resident advocacy. I have a lot of respect for her. She was a force to be reckoned with.

Denise heads to City Hall

What places in the community are special for you?

There’s no real one place in particular. There’s a few places that are important. Things happened all over the community. I would say the parks are important, the Lawrence Heights Recreation Centre, Unison, Flemington Public School, or Bathurst Heights- when it closed a lot of things changed.

What are some things you really like about the community?

The number one thing I like about the community- the people. You can meet people here from all over the world- from Africa, from India, from Europe, from South America, from the Caribbean. You can learn about people and their culture in one space. For me, that was very exciting- I came from Windsor and we didn’t have a lot of people from different cultures there. People have the strongest sense of community here than in any other place I’ve lived. I lived in places where I didn’t even know my neighbour. I thought that was sad.

Denise and Yvette, LHION Coordinator

In 1996 we had a high population of people with English as a second language. I was taking a computer class and a requirement of the class was that you had to create a program. So I created a program where the parents came to school and read to the children. Flemington School ran that program for a year.

There was also the Lawrence Heights Parents Support Group. That came out of CEACL- Community Engagement and Action for Change Leadership. A group of us decided to start our own group. Kadijah and Almaz designed the proposal and sent the application to the Social Investment Fund at Toronto Community Housing. We worked with parents to find ways of supporting their children in the education system. The TDSB often talks in ways that scares parents and families so we worked to ensure people understood the education system.

I always understood from childhood that if you want to see change, you have to be involved, you have to take action. So that’s something that was ingrained in me from my childhood I would say.

I’ve done healing circles since 2012. I was accepted into a program in Regent Park called Immigrant Women’s Integration Program. The goal was to help women in communities to take leadership roles and become community engagement workers. Towards the end of the program we had to do a placement in a non-profit organization and I was doing my placement at Unison. One day when I was chairing a safety meeting, there was a shooting on the hill, right behind Flemington Public School. I asked Jen Quinlan who was a Manager at Unison at the time, if I could research healing circles and if we could pull something together. She was very supportive. I started looking at different types of healing circles. Shortly after that, Gillian Kranias invited me to a Pow Wow near Curve Lake where a Peruvian healer was to facilitate a healing circle. So I went. Wow, what an experience. In the process of doing my research I connected with Jermaine Downey from YOUCAN. From there we started doing circles. My first healing circle was in the summer of 2012. I decided to create a manual, a living document that spoke to impact of youth, gun and gang related violence on a community and how residents worked together to support each other in their healing and response to critical incidents.

For some people, I would say it’s the loss of hope. Some of the policies of organizations that govern residents of Lawrence Heights, such as Toronto Community Housing and Toronto Employment and Social Services, keep you stuck, rather than provide the stepping stones that they were supposed to provide. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way out for a lot people. Even if you work hard to move forward, there are so many disincentives for people to get ahead. Many people come here for a better life, and want to move up the socio-economic ladder. But there are policies that are stumbling blocks and work against people and keep people in the system. They seem to just claw people right back in to a system that doesn’t work for them.

We could do so many things if we could just change the way we think and start to think outside the box. We need to build the capacity of people and help the\m to reach higher. AND SUCCEED!

What are your hopes and aspirations for Lawrence Heights in the future?

My hopes and aspirations for Lawrence Heights as we move forward into revitalization is that we continue to believe that we are the agents of change. That what seems impossible is possible. That we continue to build community and keep our heads to the sky.